"If "Dawson's Creek" had been about warlocks, it would look like this."

When I first saw the TV ads for "The Covenant", skimming past them during TiVo fast-forward commercial breaks, I was sure that it was a new series on WB. Generically handsome teen boys driving fast cars, a little spooky mood lighting a lα "Supernatural," a pallid blonde debutard in distress  it looked like the pitch was something along the line of "'Dawson's Creek' meets 'Charmed.'"

Turns out, that wasn't far from the truth. And while I was surprised that it was a feature film, I was even more surprised to see Renny Harlin's name attached as director. Why this should surprise me, I have no idea  the only through-line in the Finnish hackmaster's career is his willingness to direct any piece of crap that gets thrown his way, from Die Hard 2 to The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, as well as the Stallone crap-a-thon Cliffhanger and the gawdawful Deep Blue Sea. The guy directed a version of "American Gladiators" for Finnish television, y'all. An auteur he ain't.

So here we have Harlin directing a supernatural thriller about teenaged boys with witchy powers aimed at the 13-to-17-year-old demographic. Okay, I'll bite. I admit to enjoying The Long Kiss Goodnight, actually. And I'll even 'fess up to liking Cutthroat Island if you get a few drinks in me. Really  how bad could this be?

The answer: Not as bad as it could have been. Unfortunately, it's not all that good, either  especially if you're nitpicky about things like dialogue and, you know, plot.

In a flat-out steal from The Lost Boys, we're introduced to four generically handsome young men standing atop an impossibly high bluff, looking down at the lights of a distant beach party. One at a time they jump off the cliff, flying through the foggy night and landing with cat-like grace at the bottom. They saunter over to the beach party  one of those nighttime, torch-lit raves that only actually happen in movies or on "The O.C."  and immediately catch the eye of new girl Sarah (Laura Ramsey).

"Who are they?" she asks her dusky roommate, Kate (Jessica Lukas). "They're the Sons of Ipswich," Kate tells her. "Why do you call them that? Are they some sort of boy band?" Sarah wittily retorts. Well, yes, in a way they are  all four are descendants of some όber-powerful witch families from back in the Massachusetts witch-hunt days, and they all have Secret Magical Powers that come into full force when they turn 18. They're only 17 right now, so they're just pikers, apparently.

The alpha male of the group is Caleb (Steven Strait), a Billy Zane lookalike who tries to keep the other three in line. See, if they use their powers too much it becomes addictive, and it makes 'em age extra-fast, to boot. Caleb's dad (who may be an uncredited Rutger Hauer, or not) is one such warlock fella who went overboard with the magic and now, at 44, he's an aged wreck whose makeup recalls both Salieri at the end of Amadeus and Pirate of the Caribbean's squid-faced Davy Jones.

Caleb's interchangeable pals  Blond Guy (Toby Hemingway), Baby-faced Guy (Chace Crawford) and Long-haired Motorcycle Guy (Taylor Kitsch) are getting weird visitations from "darklings"  scary beings that appear for a few seconds for no apparent reason other than to freak them out. And Caleb's about to "ascend," i.e., turn 18, so it probably has something to do with that. And Sarah gets menaced by something in the shower. And there's a new guy in school (Sebastian Stan), so we know he's involved somehow. There's a lot of furrowed eyebrows and assurances of "I've got your back, bro" and exterior shots of the super-spooky prep school they all attend even though they never seem to have classes.

The screenplay is credited to writer/director J.S. Cardone (remember his abominable vampire flick, The Forsaken?), and it feels like an awful lot of it got excised before it made to the screen. Characters are introduced who end up offering nothing to the story, there's much talk of a "fall festival" and big dance even though school just started and neither the festival nor the dance figure into the plot, a rivalry between our heroes and another group of guys leads to a shoving match and then ... nothing. Scenes which feel like set-ups for something important go nowhere, and most of the decisions the characters make  like splitting up before going to the dance, and Caleb refusing to let his bros help him battle the bad guy  make no sense except as plot machinations. And what are the limits of their powers? We see them fly, drive off cliffs, summon up spiders and new windshields for their cars ... how powerful do they get after age 18? What can't they do? What exactly did Caleb's dad do with his power that turned him into that feeble old monster? There are an irritating number of unanswered questions here.

There are, however, several scenes involving our nubile young heroes in various states of undress (they're on the swim team! And they take showers together!) and a final showdown between two warlock boys throwing balls of energy at each other that resembles nothing so much as an episode of "Dragonball Z" set in an old barn.

What's puzzling about The Covenant is that there's so much potential for this to have been a really good movie. The actors are all okay, the basic premise has promise, and there was obviously a decent special-effects budget. The ending is left open for a sequel, and the studio commissioned a four-issue comic book prequel that's been published by Top Cow, so obviously they were hoping to turn this into a franchise  why, then, is it so damn sloppy?

It's sad when you watch a feature film and think that the material would have been far better served as a TV show. Had WB actually produced this as a pilot for a series  and patched up all the plot problems  they could have made a fortune. But as a movie, it's just badly, badly done.